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He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to take any serious part in it.

Leo Tolstoy

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Leo Tolstoy
Age: 82 †
Born: 1828
Born: January 1
Died: 1910
Died: January 1
Diarist
Esperantist
Essayist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Playwright
Prosaist
Writer
Tolstoi
Tolstoy
Lev Nikolaevich
graf Tolstoĭ
Lev Nikolayevich
Count Tolstoy
Count Lev Tolstoy
Leo
graf Tolstoy
Lev
Count Tolstoy
Lev
graf Tolsztoj
Лев Николаевич
c граф Толстой
Lew
graf Tolstoi
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Lev Tolstoy
Count Leo Tolstoy
Life
Seeing
Unlucky
Evil
Falsehood
Truth
Believing
Part
Clearly
Take
Goodness
Many
Capacity
Believe
Possibility
Men
Serious

More quotes by Leo Tolstoy

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We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them.
Leo Tolstoy
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but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.
Leo Tolstoy
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The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another's labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he must get to live.
Leo Tolstoy
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In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as insoluble, urging him to love and to life.
Leo Tolstoy
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The time is fast approaching when to call a man a patriot will be the deepest insult you can offer him. Patriotism now means advocating plunder in the interest of the privileged classes of the particular State system into which we have happened to be born.
Leo Tolstoy
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Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars
Leo Tolstoy
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In our age the common religious perception of men is the consciousness of the brotherhood of man - we know that the well-being of man lies in the union with his fellow men. True science should indicate the various methods of applying this consciousness to life. Art should transform this perception into feeling.
Leo Tolstoy
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Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.
Leo Tolstoy
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There can be no peace for us, only misery, and the greatest happiness.
Leo Tolstoy
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As we live through thousands of dreams in our present life, so is our present life only one of many thousands of such lives which we enter from the other more real life and then return after death. Our life is but one of the dreams of that more real life, and so it is endlessly, until the very last one, the very real the life of God.
Leo Tolstoy
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When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to her who suffers, and try to help her.
Leo Tolstoy
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…the majority of men do not think in order to know the truth, but in order to assure themselves that the life which they lead, and which is agreeable and habitual to them, is the one which coincides with the truth.
Leo Tolstoy
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Knowledge is real knowledge only when it is acquired by the efforts of your intellect, not by memory
Leo Tolstoy
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Man recognizes that he will not die, only when he recognizes that he was never born, but always has been, is, and will be.
Leo Tolstoy
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If you do not know your place in the world and the meaning of your life, you should know there is something to blame and it is not the social system, or your intellect, but the way in which you have directed your intellect.
Leo Tolstoy
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And so the liberal tendency became a habit with Stepan Arkadyich, and he liked his newspaper, as he liked a cigar after dinner, for the slight haze it produced in his head.
Leo Tolstoy
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We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions, and there's no altering that.
Leo Tolstoy
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You see, if you take pains and learn in order to get a reward, the work will seem hard but when you work... if you love your work, you will find your reward in that.
Leo Tolstoy
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It is no sin to look at a nice girl.
Leo Tolstoy
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But I'm glad you'll see me as I am. Above all, I wouldn't want people to think that I want to prove anything. I don't want to prove anything, I just want to live to cause no evil to anyone but myself. I have that right, haven't I?
Leo Tolstoy